State Offices of Outdoor Recreation Workshop

Offices of outdoor recreation offer states the opportunity to diversify their economies, improve citizen health and protect our lands, waters and wildlife, all at the same time. In the past year alone, five states have announced the creation of offices of outdoor recreation, bringing the country’s total to eight, with more in the wings.

This workshop, designed to create a toolkit for the creation of state offices of outdoor recreation, builds on last year’s program, which participants from North Carolina credited with taking “a year and a half” off the process of launching their office. Rather than focusing on existing state offices in Colorado, Utah and Washington, as we have the past two years, the workshop will feature representatives from state offices that are now coming online.

Principals behind the drive for offices in Oregon, North Carolina, Vermont and Wyoming, as well as the country’s newest Director of a state office of outdoor recreation, Montana’s Rachel VandeVoort, will share lessons learned from their efforts to create offices in a panel discussion format, with assistance from Brad Petersen, America’s first Director, and Janette Heung, Colorado’s Deputy Director (the first such deputy director in the country). The panel discussion will be followed by a “Campaign Workshop” in which participants work in teams to develop actionable plans for office creation in their respective regions.